Day Twelve

To warm up something easy, that I can't mess up. I affix the wire for the night light. I have photos showing the wire coming out of the light but none showing where it goes to. I have photos of the wire running up the big weld line between glacis and side armour - but not telling me where the wire ends. Luckily, the book has this drawing. Great; now I know Point A and Point B. I do not attempt to model this as per the possibly fanciful drawing as the wire casing is a flexible job and they would have made it as short as possible.

Looks about right to me.

Now we have a bit of cleaning up to do. The original guard I made for the gunner's periscope is rubbish, I pull it off and have another go.

Much better, and with little holes in it too. I improve the little pin sticking out on the left. I drill, I mount a bit of styrene rod on something flat and glue that from behind. It looks messy but I'll be cleaning up things like this before I paint. In the photo I espy a round cap thing which on the kit is like a socket; I'd been wondering about that. I need a little disc of plastic or steel.

I hack it off and there we go. Too easy. I might just leave this as it; no one will know. I did drill out the periscope. Photo shows me what a poor job I did. I will scrape that clean with a brand new blade.

Look what I found in my spares box. An MG34 barrel by Armorscale. Makes me feel I might work on the machine gun mounting.

So here are the bits. The kit parts are fairly good. The kit parts at far left have ejector pin marks. But Academy has done very well to minimise these, and seams on this kit - practically non-existent. The precision is awesome 10/10. I was thinking of finding an after-market gun but the beautiful brass barrel and shield will get this over the line. Notice I have NOT used nippers to free these parts from the sprue. Nippers will break delicate parts.

Instead, I use one of these saw attachments on my dremel; this goes through the plastic like a knife through butter. Some parts you can hack out with a knife, some parts you really can't. For delicate parts you need one of these.

Book has PLENTY of detail. It's highly likely the brass barrel I'm going to use is not exactly the right one but meh who cares.



















Hmmmmm. Okay, I will build with what I have. I will glue the gun to the mount with Aquadhere and not fix the whole assembly permanently. That means I can always get an after-market set and replace it sometime in the future. I'll get back to you when I have it all together.






This is the peg for where the butt stock is removed. I won't even both trying to clean this part up, I'll replace it with a bit of styrene rod.

The brass barrel is going to cost me; I'll have to make a sight and work out all those other bits. At least I have good photos. The cooling sheath (is that what it is?) is getting drilled out until it's super-thin.








I manage all this without too much difficulty.












But I do not manage this. I have spent two hours trying to glue these shields on. I had one on perfectly but in trying to fit the other I broke it off. About ten times now I have messed it up and had to use the debonder to clean up. I'll keep at it.

That was one of the worst modelling experiences I've ever had. Four hours I think. The shields are holding on by a thread. They were not bent perfectly and that's probably why they didn't join properly. They will break off at the slightest touch. And I see I forgot to file the rear end of the shield, those two little tags from where I cut them out. Right. I am out of options. I put a few little blobs of Araldite inside to fortify the construction; I have to because I still have a fair bit of work to do on this assembly. By now I just don't care. Into every life a little rain must fall. At least the shields are all squared up and that's the important thing. We'll pull it all together somehow. I'm going to make a ham cheese tomato toastie and watch Family Guy. Enough for one day. Man.

Next time - I've been thinking about this - I will buy two of the kit and two of the brass. It makes sense, it really does: second chance with every part you tackle OR best of two every time.

Hmm. The Araldite has set and the damage isn't too bad, and I'm feeling a little better. There was one thing I wanted to attend to today, a quick job. At the sides and on the top of the gun mantlet are holes which house what I learn from my book are centering bolts -

- which in the kit are only hinted at with these three divets.

So I drill them. To smooth the edges of the holes I twiddle my pointy blade in there very, very gently.